By Karen Degen, Certified EFT Practitioner
It was not unusual for my client “Sarah” to still be in bed after 9.30 a.m. on a workday. When she came to see me she claimed that she needed a lot of sleep and was tired all of the time. She confessed that she didn’t always sleep well and she felt this was the reason why she had trouble getting out of bed in the morning.
Sarah had a school-age child, but her partner was the one who got her breakfast and off to school while Sarah snoozed on. She knew that successful people get up early in the morning and she felt lazy. In her business, Sarah often didn’t make calls to prospective clients that should have been made and she often used the excuse that she never had enough time in her day.
As we talked through her sleeping problem, we identified a secondary gain that she would have more time to be rejected by clients and more time for things to go wrong if she started her workday at an earlier time.
Sarah’s mother was an alcoholic and when Sarah was young her mother would still be in bed when she left for school in the morning. Her mother would still be in bed when Sarah returned home from school in the afternoon. There would always be a long list of chores waiting for Sarah as soon as she walked in the door. It seemed to Sarah that the only thing her mother did was stay in bed all day and come up with a exhaustive list of chores for Sarah to do, rather than get out of bed and do them herself.
We had worked on some of the issues around her mother earlier sessions, but we addressed the staying-in-bed-all-day part during a session.
The EFT Setup statements used:
Even though mom stayed in bed all day, and I hated that, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though I’m lazy and I can’t get up early, I deeply and completely accept and forgive myself.
Even though I wasn’t allowed to rebel as a teenager and I’m rebelling now, I deeply and completely accept and forgive myself.
Even though I need lots of sleep and it’s in my genes, I have to have it, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though I am not disciplined and I don’t want to get out of bed at 7:00 a.m., I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though getting up at 7:00 a.m. will mean more time to be rejected and more time for things to go wrong at work, I deeply and completely accept myself.
We tapped through specific events with Sarah and her mother; on her feelings seeing her mother still in bed in the afternoon, and on being left a list of chores to complete. We tapped until her emotions were released. As with any specific event, I was checking Sarah’s SUD Level of Intensity throughout our tapping.
At the end of the session I checked Sarah’s beliefs about wanting to stay in bed, and how she felt emotionally. The belief that the world is is a placed to be rejected had changed to her world is a safe place, and her life is OK. I asked her for her to score herself again on her SUD Level of Intensity regarding her feeling lazy, and she gave herself an 1 out of 10.
We continued to tap on aspects around staying in bed until I felt we had made a significant change in her anxiety level around wanting to sleep all day. But how successful we were would be revealed in the weeks that followed.
I received the following email from Sarah 6 weeks later:
You and I rock! I wake up around 7:00 a.m. every morning like magic. Sometimes I am straight up, other times I have breakfast and first watch the TV news. But it is very very rare that I am not at the computer starting my work by 8:30 a.m.
How EFT works is beyond me, but it does work!
